5/14/15: Don’t Go Stabbin’ My Heart

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'80s slasher films, 1980s films, Alf Humphreys, Canadian films, Carl Marotte, cinema, Cynthia Dale, Don Francks, film reviews, films, Friday the 13th, George Mihalka, Gina Dick, gory films, Halloween, Harry Warden, heavily-edited, Helene Udy, horror, horror films, horror movies, Jack Van Evera, John Beaird, John McDermott, Keith Knight, Larry Reynolds, Lori Hallier, love triangle, masked killers, miners, mining disaster, Movies, My Bloody Valentine, Neil Affleck, Patricia Hamilton, Paul Kelman, pickaxe, psycho killers, Rob Stein, Rodney Gibbons, Sean Cunningham, set in Canada, slasher films, Stephen A. Miller, Terry Waterland, Tom Kovacs, Valentine, Valentine's Day

While most folks probably feel that the insane killers are the determining factor in slasher films, I’d wager to say that there’s another factor that’s just as prominent and important: those kids just don’t listen. Time and time again, the youthful fodder in slasher films are given a handy set of rules to remember (“Don’t go in the woods,” “Don’t go in the cabin,” “Don’t have sex,” “Don’t look in the basement,” “Don’t split up,” “Don’t turn your back on it,” “Don’t feed it after midnight”) and, time after time, they just blow a raspberry and do their own thing. Doesn’t matter how many crotchety old men, sinister gypsies or age-old legends get thrown in their faces: these kids are here to party…and, of course, die.

The “rule” that the kids break (and pay for) in Canadian slasher classic My Bloody Valentine (1981) is the same one that Sir Kevin Bacon would rail against a scant three years later in the tap-dancing epic Footloose (1984): they just wanna dance, dammit, and they could give a hoot what any old psycho killers say. When the psycho killer in question just might be the pickaxe-wielding, cannibalistic and Valentine’s Day-hating sole survivor of a mining disaster, however, well…maybe the kids really should have listened.

20 years ago, in the town of Valentine’s Bluff, negligent mining officials paid more attention to the rockin’ Valentine’s Day dance than the mine and the resulting cave-in produced only one survivor, Harry Warden, who would proceed to murder the offending officials with his pickaxe. Leaving behind bloody heart-shaped boxes, Harry would also leave a parting directive: no more Valentine’s dances, ever. After heeding the maniac’s orders for two decades, the town’s young folks decide to throw caution to the wind and get their boogie on. The one guy not invited to the party? Harry Warden. Turns out ol’ Harry’s the kinda guy who doesn’t need an invitation, however: when he gets wind of the planned bash, the malevolent miner takes his weapon of choice out of retirement and starts to cut a (very) bloody swath through the unknowing town.

As the bodies pile up behind the scenes, a love triangle takes center-stage: T.J (Paul Kelman), the wayward son of the town’s mayor/mine owner, has returned home and attempted to rekindle his romance with Sarah (Lori Hallier), the girl he left behind. Only problem is, Sarah has hooked up with T.J.’s former best friend, Axel (Neil Affleck), a pompous, abusive lout who doesn’t take kindly to his ex-bestie popping up in the picture. As the two alpha males butt heads and strut around, Sarah and her friends decide to take the party into the mine, proper. Led by cheerful Hollis (Keith Knight) and goofball Howard (Alf Humphreys), the ladies descend into an area of the mine that’s been out of commission since the days of Harry Warden. As they’ll come to find, however, not all old, dead things stay buried…and, sometimes, the killer you don’t know is far scarier than the one you do.

George Mihalka’s My Bloody Valentine fits neatly within the ’80s slasher boom, coming less than a year after Sean Cunningham would scare us out of the summer camp with his now iconic Friday the 13th (1980), right in the middle of a rather impressive glut of like-minded films. While many (most?) of the ’80s slasher boom would end up being rather forgettable carbon-copies of better films, there were plenty of them that stood out on their own due to various degrees of individuality: My Bloody Valentine certainly stands proud with these.

While the acting is the same kind of thing fans of the subgenre should know to expect (in some places, it’s so broad as to approximate a ’50s beach movie), the performers are all personable and none of them, including Humphrey’s “oh so zany” Howard, ever wear out their welcome. While the film’s central love triangle ends up being rather overheated and corny, it does provide a reasonable measure of dramatic tension, along with leading to the inevitable moment where the feuding beaus must join forces to save their (shared) beloved. The adults in the film, namely Don Francks’ Chief Newby and Larry Reynolds’ Mayor Hanniger, are all largely ineffectual but, then again, that’s also par for the course with the majority of ’80s slasher films, as is the de rigueur first-person POV shots and heavy breathing on the soundtrack.

Atmosphere-wise, Mihalka and crew make the very best of their mine location, providing plenty of suitably creepy shots and tense moments, highlighted by the showstopper where the masked miner slowly strides down a tunnel, smashing lit bulbs with his pickaxe: it’s a truly glorious moment and one that’s been replicated several times in the 30+ years since it (presumably) creeped the living shit out of audiences. Speaking of the miner: all slasher films live and die by their main creepazoid and My Bloody Valentine’s villain is one of the greats. Silent, hulking and prone to imaginative kills, ala Jason, the miner is a simple but massively effective construct: more’s the pity that this (and the 2011 remake) were his only moments in the sun (so to speak).

Despite being hailed as a minor classic within the subgenre, My Bloody Valentine is equally notorious as being one of the most heavily edited films of the era. Whether due to societal issues of the time, an increased focus on censorship or the blowback from other violent films, the vast majority of the film’s creative kills are edited almost to the point of nonexistence: in an ironic twist, My Bloody Valentine is both one of the most AND least gory of the ’80s slasher boom. While I detest censorship, in general, the edited version of Mihalka’s film ends up being its own curious kind of beast: with the geekshow factor of the excessively violent kills removed, leaving only snippets of the aftermath, the focus is put back on the actual film. As such, the edited version of My Bloody Valentine is a rather lame gore flick (the worst shot in the edited version is the seconds-long image of Mabel’s burned body) but it’s actually a very effective suspense/horror film, similar to the first Friday the 13th or, to a much lesser extent, Hooper’s unbeatable Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).

While a restored version of the film from several years back added in some of the censored gore, the version that most folks will probably see is the more readily available edited version. After seeing both, I still find myself leaning towards the edited one a little more, perhaps because the “restored” version is still edited: it’s kind of like cleaning off one spot of a filthy window while leaving the rest dirty. At the very least, the fully edited version has a sense of unity that’s less jarring than the re-added footage, even though some of the setpieces are so gloriously loony as to warrant the added attention (the scene where Helene Udy’s Sylvia gets turned into a human water faucet manages to handily one-up the meat hook scene in TCM, while recalling some of the more gonzo giallos).

As a big proponent of film history and its more unsung chapters, I’ve always enjoyed My Bloody Valentine, even if it’s nowhere near the creme de la creme of the movement. The film is fast-paced, fun and endlessly inventive, however, even if it occasionally winks so hard in the direction of Cunningham’s originator that it gets a severe eye cramp (in particular, the character of Jack Van Evera’s Happy is just Walt Gorney’s Crazy Ralph with a different Social Security number). I’m willing to wager that most fans of slasher films (or just horror films, in general) will already be familiar with this little export from America’s Northern neighbors. If not, I heartily suggest rectifying that little omission: in order to know where horror is going, you have to know where it was. Back in the dawning years of the ’80s, this is where horror was. If your only experience with holiday-themed horror is John Carpenter’s pumpkin king, set a date with My Bloody Valentine next February: the movie has a lot of heart…and it just might win yours.

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2/19/15: Open Mouth, Remove Doubt

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Addison Timlin, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Anthony Anderson, Ben Jonson, Charles B. Pierce, Charles B. Pierce Jr., cinema, Ed Lauter, Edward Herrmann, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Gary Cole, horror, horror movies, Joshua Leonard, meta-films, Movies, remakes, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, slasher films, Spencer Treat Clark, Texarkana, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, Veronica Cartwright

Despite an intense dislike of unnecessary remakes and reboots, I’m still able to concede one point: there are certain films that could actually benefit from a second take. Whether a good idea that was scuttled due to production issues or errant elements (bad script, bad actors, bad effects, etc…) or just something that could have used a little longer in the oven, some films just don’t get a fair shake the first time around. A prime example of this particular phenomenon is Charles B. Pierce’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976): while this proto-slasher – Pierce’s film actually came out a few years before Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and several years before it would influence Jason Voorhee’s sack-cloth mask in Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) – has a lot to recommend it, including some truly ahead-of-its-time brutality and violence, it’s also plagued by a mess of tonal inconsistencies and unnecessary comedic elements. In fact, one of the single biggest problems with the film is director Pierce’s performance as a bumbling cop, a bit of comedic relief that’s as unwelcome as it is amateurish and grating. If ever there was a movie that could use the ol’ remake treatment, this would definitely be one of the front-runners.

This, of course, brings us to 2014 and a long overdue remake of Pierce’s original chiller, courtesy of TV director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. As previously mentioned, there aren’t a ton of crooked lines to straighten: keep the creeping sense of dread, the isolated Texas locations, the terrifying, masked killer, lose the stupid comic relief and voila: low-key exploitation shocker, ready to serve. In an era where remakes tend to become more straight-forward, streamlined, humorless versions of their predecessors, this seems like the biggest no-brainer of all time. Despite starting strong, however, Gomez-Rejon manages to screw this up more direly than Pierce ever could, all while breaking one of my cardinal rules of horror films: he turns a formerly silent killer into a chatter-box and, in the process, scuttles every last bit of tension, fear and power that the original film held. What we’re left with, unfortunately, is a meta-fictional mess that loses the intentional comedy but replaces it with a groan-worthy “tough talkin’ villain who’s hardly a better alternative.

The smartest thing that Gomez-Rejon’s remake does is to not only acknowledge the original film but to find ways to organically work it into the framework of the current one. To that end, we have a similar situation to something like Scream 3 (2000), wherein the events that took place in the original film are treated as fact: in this case, there really were a series of unsolved murders that were perpetrated in the Texarkana area in 1976. The burlap-masked killer was never caught, although suspicions and accusations have flown ever since. Pierce’s film became an ingrained part of the local culture and even became something of a Halloween staple in Texarkana. The events that we’re about to see, we’re told, took place in the area in 2013, nearly forty years after the original murders.

The events in question, of course, are more murders: copycats of the original killings, to be exact. It all begins when Jami (Addison Timlin) and her boyfriend, Corey (Spencer Treat Clark), leave a drive-in screening of Pierce’s film to go neck on Lover’s Lane. Faster than you can say “deja vu all over again,” the burlap-sack-bedecked Phantom shows up and brutally dispatches Corey, before letting Jami leave, albeit with a directive: make the towns-people remember. To that end, we get some bush-league detective work as Jami runs around and tries to dig up the backstory on the Phantom, all while the killer mows down the frightened civilians in pretty much the same ways as the original film. This all culminates in a final “twist” revelation that comes out of left-field, as surprise revelations, double-crosses and an ocean of red herrings come together to create one boisterous, if highly nonsensical, potboiler.

Before the killer speaks, Gomez-Rejon’s film actually builds up a decent amount of suspense and atmosphere. In ways, the beginning is reminiscent of the original Halloween (organically, not slavishly) and has no shortage of style. Once the Phantom opens his pie-hole, however, it’s almost as if the film takes a hard left turn into over-heated pulp and it never recovers. The style becomes gradually fussier and overly flashy, the dialogue becomes ridiculously pulpy and one unbelievable situation rolls into another stretch of belief with uncanny ease. It’s almost as if the arbitrary decision to make the Phantom talk necessitated pitching the film in a more frenetic, over-the-top direction than the original. It’s not a dark comedy, per se, but it’s also not a patch on the original film’s intentional comedy, either.

Case in point: the tough-as-nails Texas Ranger that Ben Jonson portrayed in the original has been replaced by Anthony Anderson’s outrageously over-the-top ‘Lone Wolf’ Morales in the remake. Anderson mugs and chews scenery ferociously, although he manages to stop just shy of original director Pierce’s slapstick performance. It’s an odd choice, especially when we get the scene where Lone Wolf watches a copy of the original film and studies Jonson’s performance: it’s a meta-moment within a meta-film but it doesn’t seem to reveal anything about either Lone Wolf or the film, itself. It’s a problem that comes up again and again: the remake seems to draw attention to or accentuate elements from the first film but to no end.

In certain ways, the film’s devotion to uncovering the Phantom’s backstory (his origin story, if you will) makes this akin to Rob Zombie’s redos of the Halloween series, rather than the murder-procedural of the first film. It’s a decidedly different tone, especially once the film really gets going and seems to be a way to humanize or sympathize (at least to some extent) with the killer, ala Zombie’s abused Michael Myers. I’ve never been a fan of the Halloween remakes and this sometimes brought those to mind in unpleasant ways.

Despite my numerous issues with the film, Gomez-Rejon’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown is certainly not without its charms. The film is constantly stylish, even if it often feels cluttered and overly busy and the effects work is quite impressive: while the original film was no shrinking violet when it came to violence, the remake ups the ante in some pretty significant ways. A setpiece involving a severed head is pretty silly but a protracted stabbing has the uncomplicated, reptilian zeal of a true nightmare. If nothing else, the film usually looks pretty good and is satisfying on a purely visceral level.

The film also has an impressive supporting cast, with familiar faces like Gary Cole, Ed Lauter and the late Edward Herrmann showing up in various capacities. While the whole film is over-the-top and rather feverishly pitched, there’s plenty of game performances to go round. For her part, Addison Timlin (one of the best things about the otherwise depressingly mundane Odd Thomas (2013)) does a fine job as the hero, even if the script keeps trying to saddle her with unnecessary love stories. If anything, I kind of wish that this cast could have come together in a better project: they’re all fun, in pieces, but don’t really add up to a cohesive whole.

Ultimately, I can’t help but feel that Gomez-Rejon’s film is a heap of missed opportunities. In many ways, Pierce’s original was a perfectly serviceable car that just needed a new door: the remake replaces the door, true, but also overhauls the engine in ways that cause the car to cease running. There’s nothing quite as terrifying as a silent, emotionless, motiveless killer: when you can’t reason, bargain or plead with someone, then there truly is no hope. Charles B. Pierce knew this, as did John Carpenter. By making his Phantom speak, taunt, bully and bluster, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon throws out the one element of the original film that unequivocably worked. It’s not how you’d work on a car and it’s definitely not how you build a horror film.

 

10/9/14 (Part Two): Sing Your Heart Out

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31 Days of Halloween, Allie MacDonald, Brandon Uranowitz, campy films, cinema, Douglas Smith, feature-film debut, film musicals, film reviews, films, horror films, horror musicals, Jerome Sable, Little Shop of Horrors, Meat Loaf, Melanie Leishman, Minnie Driver, Movies, musical theater, performing arts camp, Phantom of the Opera, Phantom of the Paradise, Repo! The Genetic Opera, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Scream, slasher films, Stage Fright, The Devil's Carnival, The Haunting of the Opera, writer-director

For some reason, there just aren’t a lot of cinematic horror musicals. Oh, sure…we’ll always have the rogues’ gallery of The Little Shop of Horrors (1986), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and Phantom of the Paradise (1974). There are even a few new ones that slip through now and then: Darren Lynn Bousman’s Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) is pretty great, as is his The Devil’s Carnival (2012) (Who knew that one of the folks associated with the Saw series would go on to helm two of the better modern film musicals? Not I, said the fly.) There’s also the odd musical episode on genre shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Todd & the Book of Pure Evil. That being said, you can pretty much count the number of horror musicals on your hands, excluding, of course, filmed versions of stage plays like Phantom of the Opera or Sweeney Todd.

If you think about it, however, that kind of makes sense: movie musicals, in general, haven’t been popular for some time (unless we’re talking about animated films, of course, which seem to be as popular as ever) and musicals and horror have never been the most natural fit, despite the genre’s origins with silent films. Musicals tend to bring their own unique sets of problems to the table, not the least of which is that you have to actually have good songs: if the tunes aren’t catchy or memorable, what’s the point, really? I’m not going to argue that every song in The Rocky Horror Picture Show is memorable in its own right: some tunes exist merely to push the narrative forward, plain and simple. Without showstoppers like “The Time Warp,” “Science Fiction/Double Feature” and “Eddie,” however, I doubt that the film would have as much resonance as it does, cult status or not.

One thing that really worked for me about Repo! (and there were plenty of things that didn’t work at all) was that it had actual powerhouse songs: it wasn’t loaded with them, mind you, but there were enough there that I found myself singing along more than a few times. While there were plenty of narrative holes, confusing plot elements and an over-reliance on jaw-dropping gore to pad the slow spots, there were also some pretty damn glorious musical set-pieces, such as the industrial-rocking “Zydrate Anatomy.” Without at least a few strong songs, however, the film definitely wouldn’t have stuck in my mind like it has. It sounds a little obvious but there it is: songs are pretty important for a musical.

All of this is, of course, a roundabout way of bringing us to writer-director Jerome Sable’s Stage Fright (2014). Stage Fright, you see, is the latest entry in the aforementioned cinematic horror musical sweepstakes. It features a pretty decent cast, including a few well-known names (Mini Driver, Meat Loaf). The production values are, generally, pretty good and the gore is exceptionally well-done: several of the kills in the film are at least as brutal, if not more so, than similar setpieces in “regular” horror films. For the most part, Stage Fright is a pretty average, if rather campy, horror film. As a musical, however, the film is decidedly less than average, featuring very few memorable songs and plenty of wasted potential. How could you have Meat Loaf in a horror musical and not shoot for the stars? The mind just boggles.

In many ways, Stage Fright is like a musical retelling of Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) mashed-up with Fame (1980): when she was a wee child, Camilla Swanson’s (Allie MacDonald) actress mother, Kylie (Minnie Driver), was brutally killed on opening night of her starring role in The Haunting of the Opera. Fast forward a decade and Camilla and her twin brother, Buddy (Douglas Smith), are now working in the kitchen of the Center Stage Performing Arts Camp, a facility run by Kylie’s former manager/boyfriend, Roger (Meat Loaf). The camp puts on a musical ever year: last year was a musical rendition of The Vagina Monologues (cute) but this year, Roger wants to pull all the stops out…he wants to mount a staging of The Haunting of the Opera for the first time in ten years. When Camilla hears this, she’s determined to play the part that “killed” her mother, as some semblance of closure.

The theatrical world is a shark tank, however, and Camilla is pretty much immediately over her head: she has a rival for the lead role, Liz (Melanie Leishman), who will stop at nothing to sabotage her; the director, Artie (Brandon Uranowitz), is a single-minded sleaze who plays each of his potential lead actresses against each other in order to secure sexual favors for himself; her twin brother is acting moody and kind of shitty to her and someone is running around killing the cast and crew in various creative ways (the light bulb in the mouth was a personal favorite of mine). Camilla will need to figure out who’s picked up the Phantom’s mask and resumed his killing spree before she becomes the next victim. This is one situation where the phrase “break a leg” takes on a whole other meaning, let me tell ya!

As previously mentioned, Stage Fright functions just fine as a medium-grade, youth-oriented slasher film. The kills are creative and intense, the acting is pretty enjoyable and the script is just self-aware enough to seem “deeper” than the typical “dead teenager” fare without seeming as smirking and self-referential as something like Scream (again, an obvious influence for the filmmakers). The film isn’t overly goofy or ridiculously hyperactive, which is a definite plus, although it’s also not particularly brilliant, either. Minnie Driver does just fine in a role that’s essentially a cameo, although it’s a little disappointing to see Meat Loaf be relatively wasted, especially when it comes to the singing parts. Allie MacDonald is a (mostly) likable heroine, although Douglas Smith (son Ben in TV’s Big Love) often comes across a bit too cartoonish and over-the-top. The final “twist” revelation is pretty silly but the film maintains its convictions, which is, at the very least, admirable. The movie looks pretty good, although it didn’t blow me away (there are some nice things done with shadows and framing).

The biggest issue with the film, however, is the relative weakness of its songs. With the exception of the opening number which amusingly contrasts “being gay for theatre” with “being gay in general” (one student proclaims that he’s “gay but not in that way” while another student cheerfully exclaims that he is: T & A does nothing for him, at all), there really isn’t anything vaguely memorable. Worse yet, the film completely squanders almost all of the Phantom’s opportunities for busting out sweet tunes: his songs tend to be garbled and clunky, at best, or reduced to ridiculously stereotypical “heavy metal falsettos,” at worst. I was constantly reminded of the musical episode of Todd & the Book of Pure Evil (without a doubt, one of the high-points of Canadian TV, period): in that show, the villain was given some appropriately kickass heavy metal to rock, contrasted with the rest of the cast’s more “traditional” stylings and it worked wonders. Here, the Phantom ends up with absolutely no personality, aside from his quips during the kills: it’s a huge wasted opportunity and a real head-scratcher.

The Phantom is only the most obvious victim, however: no one really gets much to do. Despite the opening song being clever (albeit in a juvenile way), none of the singers/performers stand out whatsoever: they all just blend into the woodwork. Ditto for any of the film’s big musical numbers: anonymous actors sing generic lines, shrug, rinse, repeat. Not every song in Repo! or The Devil’s Carnival was a bulls-eye, mind you, but both of the those films still managed to hit their marks roughly 200% more than Stage Fright does. Ultimately, this leaves you with a musical where the songs end up being the weakest link: yikes!

Despite my criticism, I definitely didn’t hate Stage Fright: hell, I didn’t really even dislike it, to be honest. There was plenty of potential here and I’m really curious to see what Sable comes up with next: Stage Fright was his feature debut and those can be a little rough going, at times. For the most part, Stage Fright hits its horror beats just fine, even if it owes quite a bit to Craven’s Scream franchise. The film’s big problem comes with its almost total lack of memorable musical numbers: so few stick that it almost makes them seem like an after-thought, throwing into question the whole point of a musical in the first place. Nonetheless, I’m interested to see where Sable goes from here. Who knows: in the future, he might just have a new Rocky Horror Picture Show in him. Or, at the very least, another Repo. Stage Fright isn’t quite there but I don’t hear the fat lady singing, either.

10/7/14 (Part Two): No Laughing Matter

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'70s films, 31 Days of Halloween, actor-director, Andrew Prine, based on a true story, Ben Johnson, Captain J.D. Morales, Charles B. Pierce, cinema, Dawn Wells, deadly trombones, Deputy Sheriff Norman Ramsey, film reviews, films, Friday the 13th Part 2, hooded killer, horror, horror films, influential films, isolated communities, Jim Citty, Jimmy Clem, Lovers' Lane, Movies, period-piece, Robert Aquino, serial killer, set in the 1940s, slasher films, small town life, Texarkana, Texas Ranger, the Phantom Killer, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, Town That Dreaded Sundown, true crime

Falling chronologically between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Halloween (1978), Charles B. Pierce’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976) is something of a proto-slasher: it uses many of the tropes of slasher films (masked maniac, creative kill scenes, stalking scenarios) but welds them to a more traditional true-crime format. The finished product ends up being a little like a pseudo-documentary, complete with voice-over narrator, but maintains enough horror film qualities to appeal to fans. By comparing the look of the Phantom Killer from The Town That Dreaded Sundown with Jason’s first appearance, Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), it’s also plain to see how influential the film would be on the genre movies that would follow. Although Pierce’s film would, ultimately, be less influential than either of the landmarks that surrounded it, it’s still a fairly well-made, tense little picture that’s wholly deserving of a resurgence among modern audiences. With a new remake set to open next week, it appears that horror audiences may finally be ready to focus on Texarkana and its mysterious, hooded madman once again.

Based on a true story, The Town That Dreaded Sundown takes place over several months in 1946 and deals with the activities of a serial killer in Texarkana, Arkansas. Beginning with young couples on Lovers’ Lane, the hooded killer would graduate to attacking people in the safety of their own homes before seeming to vanish into thin air. As the attacks increase in sheer viciousness, the citizens of the 40K-strong town begin to hide in their homes, avoiding the nighttime hours like the plague. At first, Deputy Sheriff Norman Ramsey (Andrew Prine) does the best he can to catch the elusive maniac but he’s soon forced to hand the case over to a living legend: Captain J.D. Morales (Ben Johnson), widely renowned as the greatest Texas Ranger to walk the earth. Together, Ramsey and Morales try to run to ground a sinister, vicious killer who seems to appear out of nowhere and vanish just as quickly. As the body count rises, the town of Texarkana is left to wonder if they’ll ever know peace and safety again.

In many ways, The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a tale of two films (three, actually, but we’ll get to that shortly): a true-crime investigation and a serial killer/slasher film. While the true-crime stuff is interesting, if a little old-fashioned, the serial killer/slasher element is particularly well-done. From his very first attack, where the killer disables a couple’s car while they sit there in stunned fear, to the climatic scene where Ramsey and Morales chase him by the railroad tracks, the Phantom Killer (Bud Davis) is one helluva great bad guy. While his initial attacks involve firearms, the killer really gets creative when he ties a knife to the end of a trombone and proceeds to “play” the instrument, repeatedly jabbing the knife into his victim’s back: it’s a nasty, thoroughly gratuitous scene but it’s also pretty genius and well-staged, inexplicably reminding of the similar method of murder in Michael Powell’s legendary Peeping Tom (1960). Like the best horror/slasher villains, the Phantom Killer is a mute, absolutely menacing presence: it’s pretty easy to take one look at the character and see the direct line of inspiration to the appearance of Jason Voorhees in the second Friday the 13th film, although elements of the Phantom Killer’s appearance and behavior can be found in at least a bakers’ dozen other horror films.

On the “good guy” side, Andrew Prine does a great job as the hard-charging Deputy, although I must admit to being slightly underwhelmed by Johnson’s characteristically gruff performance: there isn’t much shade or nuance to Captain Morales, although not being familiar with the actual person probably makes the case a little moot…after all, it’s quite possible that Morales was exactly as Johnson portrayed him. Nonetheless, I found myself gravitating towards Prine much more than I did to Johnson’s throwback “old school lawman.” The rest of the cast is decent, if a bit anonymous, although many of the supporting roles have a decidedly amateurish tinge to them that pretty synonymous with low-budget films of that era.

The single biggest problem with the film, minor quibbles aside, comes from any of the scenes involving director Charles B. Pierce, who plays police office A.C. Benson. While it’s always a bit problematic having the director pop up in his own film (actors directing themselves, ala Eastwood, Gibson or the like, are entirely different scenarios), it’s made even worse when the character is obnoxious and unnecessary. In a nutshell, the character of Benson exists solely to provide the comic relief that the film so desperately does not need: any scene featuring Pierce is pitched at absolutely screwball levels and sits at odds with anything else in the movie. Without the Benson/Pierce scenes, The Town That Dreaded Sundown plays as an effective, straight-faced thriller. With the scenes, however, the film often takes on the quality of a farce, which has the unintended effect of making the rest of the material seem slight and silly. In a way, it’s similar to the big complaint I have from the original version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956): the cheesy wraparound storyline, added later, severely dilutes the impact of the rest of the film. Similarly, the goofy comedy scenes not only don’t add anything to the film, they actually take away much of the film’s sustained mood and impact, at the very least scuttling any of the serious scenes that directly lead-in to or follow the Benson scenes. In the case of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, at least we can blame the studio for unnecessarily interfering: the tampering in Pierce’s film appears to be solely his fault. Regardless of the ultimate reason behind it, Pierce’s performance as Benson ends up being the film’s biggest problem and serves as a pretty substantial black eye.

It’s a shame, too, because the film that surrounds the absurd comic scenes is actually quite good, if somewhat less than relevatory. The setting and mood are strong, for the most part, the action is tense, the killer is frightening and the setpieces are well-staged. While I’m not normally a fan of remakes, finding them to be largely unnecessary, I can’t help but feel that the upcoming remake of Pierce’s film might not be such a bad idea. There’s a really intriguing, frightening idea to be found here: a film that focuses solely on the darker aspects and jettisons the buffoonish comic relief certainly stands a chance of being successful…tonal consistency would, at the very least, be a significant improvement over the original. If you can look past the film’s poorly executed attempts at levity, however, much of it possesses a raw, feral power that should certainly appeal to fans of “classic” slasher” films, as well as true-crime buffs. If only Pierce could have stayed behind the camera, this might have ended up as an unmitigated classic instead of a near miss: nonetheless, this is one film that you definitely shouldn’t dread.

10/7/14 (Part One): Before the Mask

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'80s films, '80s slasher films, 1st person POV, 31 Days of Halloween, Adrienne King, Betsy Palmer, camp counselors, cinema, classics, Crystal Lake, cult classic, dead teenagers, film reviews, films, Friday the 13th, giallo, Halloween, Harry Crosby, Harry Manfredini, horror, horror movies, Jason Voorhees, Jeannine Taylor, Kevin Bacon, Laurie Bartram, Mark Nelson, Movies, Peter Brouwer, revenge, Rex Everhart, Robbi Morgan, Sean Cunningham, sex equals death, slasher films, summer camp, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tom Savini, Walt Gorney

Despite “starring” in ten separate films, going to Hell, New York, outer space and slaying enough teenagers to populate a mid-size country, slasher icon Jason Voorhees was not at the center of the film that started it all, Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980). Of sure, Jason’s presence hung over the proceedings, no two ways about it: it just wasn’t his hand on the machete, so to speak. In many ways, Cunningham’s original film is more of a giallo than the brutal slashers that the franchise would evolve into with future entries. Like Hooper’s equally influential The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Friday the 13th is a fairly maligned film, seen as both bloodier and dumber than it actually is. In reality, Friday the 13th is a lean, mean, well-made and bluntly effective little film and stands proudly next to Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre as one of the founding forefathers of the modern horror film.

Story-wise, Friday the 13th is simple enough to almost be an urban legend or cautionary fairy tale. A couple of unsolved murders, along with a host of unexplained accidents and strange incidents, has led to the closure of Camp Crystal Lake for over 20 years. When hippy-dippy Steve (Peter Brouwer) decides to reopen the summer camp, against the concerns of the nearby townsfolk, it’s only a matter of time before trouble rears its ugly head again. This trouble, of course, manifests itself in the form of a heavy-breathing, blood-thirsty killer, a killer that we never get to see thanks to the film’s first-person-POV “kill scenes.” As a co-ed group of camp counselors busy themselves with renovating the camp and exploring each other’s underwear, the mysterious killer picks them off one by one, usually right after they’ve been engaging in a little of the ol’ fornication. In time, only Alice (Adrienne King) remains alive: will she be able to uncover the identity of the anonymous slasher or will she end up as just another maimed body stuffed into a cabin?

Within that amazingly simple setup, Cunningham, cinematographer Barry Abrams, composer Harry Manfredini and makeup/sfx guru Tom Savini work some pretty impressive magic. Indeed, it’s the combined forces of these four that go a long way towards explaining the power and continued impact of the film. Thanks to Abrams evocative camera-work and Cunningham’s sure-handed direction, the film manages to maintain a constant atmosphere of tension and creeping dread. Manfredini is responsible for that iconic score: it’s almost impossible to watch a slasher film, nowadays, and not immediately think of that classic “ch ch ch ka ka ka” effect. Elsewhere, Manfredini’s score builds and sets mood in as effective a way as Carpenter’s score for Halloween: like Halloween, Friday the 13th would be a much different, less effective film without its score.

Savini’s role, of course, could never be overstated: quite frankly, Tom Savini is one of the most gifted, influential makeup/sfx artists in the entire history of cinema and he elevates any film he’s involved with. In the case of Friday the 13th, Savini’s expert makeup and effects work really gives the film something to hang a hat on: while the film isn’t overloaded with pointless, gratuitous gore, it also doesn’t shy away from the red stuff: who could forget the scene where poor Jack (Kevin Bacon, in his big-screen debut) gets an arrow pushed through his throat or Marcie (Jeannine Taylor) takes an ax to the forehead? Although future entries in the series would play up the creative kill scenes to the point where they became the entire focus of the films, the kills in the original film are so well-staged and impactful that they have a resonance the rest of the franchise can’t possibly match.

As with Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th’s influence on the horror genre simply can’t be overstated: quite frankly, the film was responsible for establishing all of the slasher-film “rules” that weren’t previously established by Carpenter’s low-budget masterpiece. Crazy guy warning the intended victims? Check. Heavy-breathing, killer’s POV? Check (although Halloween did get here first). Creative, gory, murder setpieces? Check. Creepy, potentially sinister backwoods townsfolk? Check. Isolated, rural setting? Check. Sex equals death? Check. Endless sequels? Check and mate.

As mentioned earlier, the original Friday the 13th actually plays out more like one of Mario Bava or Dario Argento’s giallos than it does a “traditional” slasher film. In particular, one can see how much of an influence Bava’s Bay of Blood (1971) had on Cummingham’s film, both with regards to the kill scenes and the film’s overall style. There’s a mystery at the heart of Friday the 13th and, even though it might not be a particularly tricky one (we find out the identity of the killer by virtue of them being the only person alive aside from Alice, which is roughly equivalent to one of Matlock’s “confession on the witness stand” denouements), it still separates the film’s from the packs of “dead teenager” films that followed in its wake.

Acting-wise, the film is no worse and markedly better than many other slashers: most of the cast acquits themselves quite ably, although Kevin Bacon is a bit to backwoodsy for my taste and Adrienne King tends to wear out her welcome just a little by the time the film’s finale rolls around. Nonetheless, she’s a more than fitting “final girl” for much of the film’s running time and manages to be a bit more proactive than “cower in the corner, screaming and crying,” although she manages to do enough sustained whining to last a lifetime. Betsy Palmer ends up being the real star of the show: a TV and theatrical actress, Palmer brings an essential blend of insanity and maternal compassion to her performance as Mrs. Voorhees and her sustained cat-and-mouse chase with Adrienne King is one of the film’s unmitigated high points. Palmer is also the source of some of the film’s best behind-the-scenes stories, including the one where she actually started to beat up and throw poor King around for real, so caught up was she in the fictional action.

In fact, the filming of Cunningham’s cult classic is interesting enough to serve as its own film: fans of the franchise or filmmaking, in general, would be well-served to pick up the exhaustive coffee table book, Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th. Even though the F13 series was never my favorite of the “classic” franchises, the book is filled with so many great stories, interviews and anecdotes that it really did give me a whole new appreciation for the series. There’s also a filmed version of the book, although I must admit to not seeing it, at least yet: if they can distill even one-tenth of the fun from the book, however, I’m assuming it’s also a must-see.

For many, Friday the 13th is a film that exists more on reputation than anything else: modern audiences seem to approach many of these classic films, including Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as museum artifacts, pieces of history that were more instrumental in forming the foundation for modern horror than relevant as pieces of art, in their own right. This seems to be why modern remakes of these films are so prevalent nowadays: modern audiences and filmmakers appreciate the “sentiment” behind the films but find them too quaint for current tastes. This, of course, couldn’t be more wrong or reductive: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with these older films…it’s just that modern audiences have become more than a little jaded and lazy.

When examined on its own merits and removed from its role as a musty relic, Friday the 13th actually stands pretty tall: it’s certainly no worse than many horror films in the class of ’79/’80 and is quite a bit better than many of its peers. Like Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Cunningham’s film has a purity of vision and purpose that’s all too refreshing in an era when meta-narratives have become the default for almost every genre film. The film is clear and uncluttered, moves at a pretty breakneck pace and features a fairly decent twist ending (cribbed from De Palma’s version of Carrie (1976) but what are ya gonna do?): when compared to more generic, faceless slashers, the original Friday the 13th is practically a Kurosawa film.

While it’s a little harder to completely defend all of the films in the franchise (Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) is actually quite good, although the series tends to dissolve into muck fairly quickly after the third entry or so), the film that started it all is an absolute classic: genuinely frightening, full of great setpieces (the scene where Marcie explores the creepy restroom is amazing), great effects and effective performances. We may only see Jason as a drowned rat in the first film but the movie feels all the more powerful for his general absence. Mr. Voorhees may have gone on to become a superstar, in his own way, but the original film is the real star attraction of the franchise, hockey mask be damned.

 

10/2/14 (Part Two): Holiday Leftovers

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'80s films, '80s slasher films, 31 Days of Halloween, Charles Cyphers, cinema, Cliff Emmich, co-writers, Dean Cundey, Debra Hill, Dick Warlock, Donald Pleasence, electronic score, film reviews, films, Halloween, Halloween 2, Halloween II, horror, horror franchises, horror movies, hospitals, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jeffrey Kramer, John Carpenter, Lance Guest, Laurie Strode, Leo Rossi, Michael Myers, Movies, Nancy Stephens, Pamela Susan Shoop, Rick Rosenthal, Sam Loomis, sequels, slasher films

Memory’s kind of a funny thing. I remember really disliking Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween 2 (1981) when I first saw it, probably because I felt cheated that John Carpenter didn’t direct it. I was a huge fan of the original Halloween (1978) and I’m pretty sure that the thought of a Carpenter-less continuation of the story really ticked me off. Several years ago, I decided to watch the entire Halloween franchise in one fell swoop and I, likewise, remember being disappointed by the second entry, albeit not as disappointed as I was by the Busta entry.

This, of course, brings us to the present day where I decided to screen Halloween 2 back-to-back with the Carpenter classic. I assumed that my findings would be pretty much the same as they were in the past: this was going to be a lame cash-grab. At this point, I figured I could finally give up on the film and relegate it to the special hell reserved for sequels like Wishmaster 4 (2002) or Psycho 3 (1986). And then something kind of funny happened. Perhaps it was the warm glow from seeing the always-dependable original film…perhaps it was my complete focus on the picture at hand…regardless of the reason, I ended up…well, kinda liking the flick. It’s no patch on the original, mind you, and only barely in the same universe, quality-wise, but it actually makes perfect sense as a direct sequel (to a point) and would have brought the series to a pretty decent conclusion if the producers would have opted to end it here.

If younger me would have paid closer attention back in the day, I probably would have realized that Halloween 2 didn’t have as tenuous a relationship to Carpenter’s film as I thought it did. Not only did Carpenter and partner Debra Hill co-produce the film but they also co-wrote it and Carpenter once again provided the musical score. Dean Cundey, the masterful cinematographer from the first film, returned to shoot this, as well, insuring that the overall look would, at the very least, be pretty similar. Many of the original cast members, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence and Charles Cyphers, reprised their roles from the first film and the movie actually takes place immediately after the events of the original movie: not as in “One week later…” but as in “5 minutes later…” In fact, beyond the fact that Carpenter handed the directorial duties over to Rosenthal, both Halloween and its sequel look pretty damn similar.

All of this being said, Halloween 2 is most definitely not in the same league as Carpenter’s film. For one thing, the film falls victim to the biggest sin of sequels: more is not necessarily better. If there was one building blowing up in the first movie, level a city block in the second. Did Rambo kill ten guys in the second movie? Better give him forty for the third. The idea of escalation doesn’t technically help the quality of the film so much as keep setting a higher and higher bar for future sequel makers to leap over. In the case of Halloween, we go from a small handful of deaths in the first film (including at least a couple off-screen ones) to a small battalion in the second. It’s a curious move for the series, since the original film was all about mood and suspense with very little actual gore. Halloween 2, on the other hand, is much freer with the red stuff, including a thoroughly ridiculous scene where a victim’s blood is completely drained out onto the floor, creating something akin to a lake. There’s also a scalding, an eyeball puncture, throat slashings and the like, although nothing ever seems too gratuitous or mean-spirited (even the pool of blood pays off with one of the best ever slasher film deaths…let just say, people should always watch their step…).

The film’s other big issue is the introduction of several extraneous plot elements that seem destined to add depth to the mythos but instead just end up unnecessarily cluttering the narrative. We get druid lore, a surprise lineage revelation, a power struggle at the asylum and an angry mob throwing rocks at the old Meyers place, none of which actually pay off in any meaningful way. Part of the problem with all these plot threads is that it seems to completely push poor Jamie Lee Curtis off the screen: while Laurie was the hero of the first film, she gets so little screen-time here as to be more of a supporting player, while Loomis ends up picking up the hero reins and running roughshod. It’s also a bit disconcerting to see the strong, resolute Laurie of the first film reduced to the weak, bed-ridden Laurie of the sequel: Curtis doesn’t even sound the same in this, seeming to dial the passion down a full notch or two.

Despite all of this, however, Halloween 2 is actually a pretty decent film. It’s much more of a generic slasher than the first, especially since it trades the rich autumnal warmth of Carpenter’s film for the clinical frigidity of the hospital, but it’s briskly paced and no one element really wears out its welcome. The connection to the first film is so seamless as to be almost dizzying, which is a nice trick: while the film begins with “rerun” footage from the first, there’s a point where it seamlessly morphs into the “new” footage and I really couldn’t tell. I know where the original film ends, of course, so seeing the film “continue” past that point was disorienting but also kinda cool. It’s also nice to have another Carpenter soundtrack (I absolutely love his film scores), even if the score for Halloween 2 isn’t as evocative as the original: it’s a bit more strident but all of the familiar beats are there.

There are also plenty of nicely staged setpieces and some really nice shots, although none of this has the creeping claustrophobia of the first film. The aforementioned blood scene has a great payoff, as does the scene where someone passes out on a steering wheel, alerting Michael to Laurie’s presence. There’s also a really nicely staged shot where Michael strangles someone in the background while someone dithers around in the foreground, unaware. And I must certainly admit extreme fondness for the scene where a curious Michael peeks in through an old couple’s window and sees them watching Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968): I’m positive that’s Carpenter referencing his NOTLD nod from the first film (watch the scene where Loomis and the nurse drive up to the asylum in the rain and tell me the white-clothed patients don’t look like Romero’s similarly garbed undead), although I’ll freely admit that it might also just be happy coincidence.

Although I firmly believe that the original Halloween never needed a sequel (for me, Michael’s body disappearing and Laurie bursting into tears finish that story more definitively than “The End” ever could), I’ll also admit that Halloween 2 isn’t a terrible sequel. At the very least, it’s the last time that the series ever really bothered with any true connection to the first film, beyond the Michael Meyers connection, of course. Taken on its own, it’s a pretty decent little slasher with several great scenes but nothing spectacular. Combined with the first film, however, it actually ends up offering a bit more closure. The additional plot details may be largely unnecessary but they do make sense, in context, and the two films become a sort of duology. Halloween 2 may not be a necessary film and it certainly won’t make anyone forget the original but it ends up being a pretty good supplement to Carpenter’s film. If you’ve always given the film the cold shoulder, go ahead and give it a try: you might not be blown away but I’m willing to wager that you’ll enjoy yourself. Younger me was wrong: Halloween 2 definitely doesn’t suck. It’s pretty okay…and there’s nothing wrong with that.

10/2/14 (Part One): The Reason For the Season

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'70s films, 31 Days of Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, auteur theory, babysitters, Brian Andrews, Charles Cyphers, classic films, co-writers, cult classic, dead teenagers, Dean Cundey, Debra Hill, Donald Pleasence, electronic score, favorite films, Film auteurs, Haddonfield, Halloween, horror, horror franchises, horror movies, iconic film scores, independent film, insane asylums, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Carpenter, John Michael Graham, Kyle Richards, Michael Myers, Nancy Kyes, Nick Castle, P.J. Soles, Sam Loomis, set in the 1970s, slasher films, small town life, writer-director

Apparently, I owe John Carpenter’s classic Halloween (1978) an apology. Despite regarding the film as one of my favorites for more years than I can remember and revisiting it at least once a year, it seems that I’ve been taking it for granted. Call me “lazy” or “too comfortable” but I’ve been treating the film as background noise for far too long now: something to have on while serving up gift-wrapped sugar treats for the young’uns or to zone out to after a particularly long day at work. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I’ve seen the film so many times, kind of like how we all used to get burnt out on big radio singles back when there was radio. I’ve been looking at the movie for years but I haven’t really been “watching” it for some time now. Obviously, this was a situation that needed to be rectified.

For this year’s screening of the seasonal chiller, I decided to give it my complete and undivided attention: rather than just put it on, I wanted to try to view it (if possible) through unbiased eyes. Essentially, I had a question: if I were viewing this for the first time today, would it still have the same impact on me that it did when I was a kid? It’s a flawed experiment, obviously, since there are so many other factors to consider, not the least of which is that at the time I saw the film, I didn’t really have much to compare it to: by this point, I’ve seen more horror films than I probably thought could ever exist back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Nonetheless, I wanted to see if the film could actually still affect me: I’ve been hearing stories lately about young people laughing their way through recent screenings of the film and wanted to see if this forefather to the slasher film still had any of its raw power left. As it stands, I found out two separate things: the film hasn’t lost any of its power over the 36 years since its release…and it’s entirely possible that modern audiences have rocks in their head. I’ll try to prove the former but you’re just gonna have to take my word on the latter.

Since I find it nearly impossible to believe that there are any film fans out there who aren’t at least familiar with Carpenter’s masterpiece (or Rob Zombie’s brain-dead remakes, if that floats yer boat), I’ll just give this the Cliff Notes synopsis: 15 years ago, young Michael Myers (Will Sandin) brutally stabbed his sister to death and was sentenced to an insane asylum. Dedicated psychiatrist Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) spends the next eight years trying to cure and the seven years after that trying to keep him locked away. When Michael escapes from the asylum on the day before Halloween, Loomis tracks him back to his boyhood home, the small town of Haddonfield. Michael arrives in the town on Halloween, steals some supplies (knives and a William Shatner Halloween mask) and quickly sets his sights on decimating the town’s supply of teenagers, in particular Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), Annie (Nancy Kyes) and Lynda (P.J. Soles). As day gives way to night, Michael skulks about, picking one person off after the other. Loomis is on the case, however, and has been scouring the town from top to bottom, hunting for any sign of his elusive ward. As Michael closes the distance between Laurie and her two young charges, Tommy (Brian Andrews) and Lindsey (Kyle Richards), will Loomis get there in time or will the resourceful babysitter be forced into a fight for her life against a silent, inhuman monster?

But back to that earlier question: did the film have any impact on me this time around or did I find myself re-evaluating my lifelong love for the film, ala Kevin Smith’s now odious Clerks (1994)? As it turns out, the film is still just as impactful (to me, at least) today as it was a couple of decades ago: despite knowing every twist, turn and plot development, I was still glued to the screen and even caught myself reacting to a few setpieces that I was sure would be old hat by this time. Now that the “Is it still effective?” question is answered, time to think about the “Why?” part. Why is Halloween still such an effective horror, even as it rapidly approaches its 40 anniversary?

The easy answer, of course, is that Halloween is still so damn effective because it’s such a well-made film. Yeah, that’s a bit of a cop-out but let’s increase the magnification to 1000x, shall we? First off, Carpenter is an absolute master filmmaker: that’s no hyperbole, rather one of those accepted scientific facts. By the time of Halloween, he already had a massively entertaining sci-fi epic under his belt (Dark Star (1974), as well as one of the most undisputed badass films in the history of popular cinema: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). I’ve already written extensively about Assault on Precinct 13 in another blog but here’s the recap: Assault is one of those raw, primal films that sprung fully formed into the world, like Athena out of Zeus’ head, and proceeded to rewrite the rule book on what low-budget action films were capable enough. Suffice to say that Assault on Precinct 13 would be a feather in anyone’s cap: for Carpenter, he just called it his sophomore film.

But back to Halloween. So we’ve got a master director who’s just taken his first baby steps towards on helluva career. What else do we have? How about that iconic electronic music score? Short of the Jaws (1975) theme song (and maybe Jurassic Park (1993), come to think of it), I’m hard-pressed to recall another film’s instrumental score that’s so easily recognized and functions so Pavlovian among genre fans. The responsible party? That’d be our man John, again, who also wrote the instantly memorable score for Assault. So we have a master director and an amazing musical score…what else we got? Well, we’ve also got a pretty impressive cast, even if they’re mostly unknowns (with the exception of the legendary Donald Pleasence, of course). Despite appearing in a few TV shows prior to this, Halloween was also the big-screen debut of Jamie Lee Curtis, which also adds a few feathers to its cap: film fans, genre or otherwise, know Curtis as being one of the most dependable, strong and fun performers to tread the boards in this modern film era. Curtis’ performance as Laurie is a true watershed moment in horror, since it introduced the horror world to the notion of a strong female lead. While Laurie might not be quite in Lt. Ripley territory, her character is anything but a damsel in distress: Loomis may shoot Michael several times from a safe distance but Laurie goes mano a mano with the fucker, employing hangers, knitting needles, knives and whatever else she can get her hands on to inflict maximum damage. Loomis may be the guy who gets in the final shots (for all the good that does) but Laurie’s the one who softened up the devil, in the first place.

Unlike the scads of “dead teenager movies” that followed in its wake, the “victims” in Halloween are not a clichéd, unlikable bunch of cannon fodder: they might not be fully developed characters in the way that characters in The Godfather (1972) are, for example, but they’re also a light year away from the “horny/stupid/asshole” stereotypes that would pop up in just about every other slasher film ever made. Laurie and her friends may not quite look like teenagers but they definitely sound like them and it’s pretty impossible (for me, at least) to not feel empathy for them. Contrast this to something like Hatchet (2006), which delights in introducing super-shitty characters so that audiences will cheer when they get fed into a wood chipper: it’s a subtle but big difference.

Alright…so far, we have a film with a master director, excellent musical score, effective acting and sympathetic characters. What else does it have going on? Well, it’s got an exceptionally tight script, for one thing, a script which manages to dole out just enough information to get us intrigued but not enough to make us glaze over (I’m absolutely looking at you, Rob Z). It also has some pretty astounding cinematography, courtesy of Dean Cundey, the man with the camera who shot everything from Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976) to most of Carpenter’s catalog (including The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China and Escape From New York), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and Jurassic Park (to name but a very few out of a very impressive career). Cundey uses plenty of gorgeous wide shots in the film, along with that (by now clichéd) “killer’s POV” that’s name-checked in just about 99.9% of slasher films. If you watch Halloween and think, “Gee, this stuff is so cliché,” ponder this, Poindexter: this was the film that pretty much wrote the rulebook on this kind of stuff (if you held up your hand and said, “Bay of Blood (1971)!,” you get points for that, too).

So all that stuff’s thrown into the mix, which should go a long way towards answering the question, “Is Halloween actually a good film?” (Short answer: Of course.) The deeper question, however, is why is Carpenter’s film still so effective despite all the films that have come and gone since? There have been plenty of bloodier, rawer, more frantic, more hopeless and more eye-popping films over the years, no two ways about it. How, then, could I stand on my apple-box and bend your ears about this old dinosaur? Well, folks, there’s a pretty simple answer: like Hitchcock before him, Carpenter is an absolute wizard at creating tension so thick that you could cut it with a knife. From the opening credit sequence (and let’s be honest: it’s one of the coolest, if simplest, credit sequences in the history of the medium) to the final shot, Halloween is nothing short of a barely concealed live wire. Much of the credit for this impenetrable mood is due to Carpenter’s amazing score: rarely have there been musical tones that seem more suited for reaching into someone’s chest and squeezing their heart into strawberry jam. The film also has a deadly serious tone (despite some welcome comic relief via the ultra-snarky Annie), which helps with the oppressive atmosphere. Digging deeper, however, there’s another reason for this: Carpenter has purposefully crafted a world that oozes menace and threat from every pore, regardless of the time of day, the characters involved or the storyline.

Despite seeming the obvious way to go, the majority of Halloween’s narrative doesn’t take place during the evening: some of the flat-out creepiest shit happens right out in broad daylight. Carpenter does something so simple, yet devious, that I’m surprised no one else has really figured this out yet: he lets his monster just walk around among the unsuspecting sheep. During the lead-up to the night-time festivities, Carpenter manages to stick Michael into the corners or margins of just about every shot. Laurie notices Michael watching her from across the street, while she’s in school…Laurie notices Michael hanging out on a sidewalk, in her neighborhood…Michael is just driving a car around through the streets of Haddonfield, as natural as if he were cruising on a Saturday night. Unlike other cinematic monsters, Michael doesn’t seem to strictly a “creature of the night,” as it were. The majority of the kills occur after dark, but the stalking is pretty-much a 24-7 deal.

There’s a reason this works so beautifully and it has to do with that old chestnut of Hitchcock’s regarding showing the bomb: if a couple are sitting at a table and suddenly blow up, the audience is surprised and shocked but only momentarily. If the audience witnesses someone place a bomb under the table, set the timer and leave, however, than we suddenly have a whole other animal…we have suspense. The characters might not know about the bomb but we do, which has the natural effect of keeping us on the edge of our seats: we keep yelling at the screen, telling the idiots to get the hell away from the table but they, of course, won’t listen.

Carpenter’s bomb, so to speak, is Michael. In many ways, he’s like a living ghost that haunts Haddonfield. Since we already know who and what he is, thanks to the opening, Loomis’ description and the harrowing asylum escape, we already know what he’s capable of once he shows up among the “normal” folks. Laurie and her friends might not know who the goony guy in the Shatner mask is but we do and that makes all the difference. Since Michael is an omnipresent force in the film, we never reach a point where he’s not on our minds: we might temporarily forget him, as we get caught up in some bit of teenage minutiae but he’s always right around the corner to remind us. Once the killing begins in earnest and Michael becomes an unstoppable force, it’s almost like our fears have been confirmed: if only those idiots would have listened to us about the bomb, none of this shit would be happening. Thanks to this technique, Halloween has about a million times more resonance and power than generic slashers that merely set up a group of people, establish a threat, wait until dark and kill ’em all.

These are all great reasons to love Halloween, as far as I’m concerned, but there are plenty of other reasons. Nick Castle’s performance as Michael may be mute but he manages to instill no small amount of characterization, none the less: one of my favorite scenes in any horror movie, ever, is the bit where Michael lifts Bob (John Michael Graham) off the floor, nails him to the wall with a knife and proceeds to stare at him, slowly cocking his head to the side as if he were a dog watching a caterpillar. It’s a terrifying moment precisely because it’s such an innocent, human expression: we don’t expect this emotionless monstrosity to express curiosity, after all, since that makes him more uncomfortably human than we’d like. There’s another fantastic scene (in the same part of the film, ironically enough) where Michael puts on a sheet and Michael’s glasses and goes to see Lynda. She expects Bob while we know it’s Michael under the sheet: her goofing around turns to frustration when Bob won’t end the joke, while our hearts jump from our chest to our throat like a strongman test at the carnival. There are about a million ways this scene could have been played out but only one that achieves maximum chills and Carpenter nails it.

And there, in a pretty huge nutshell, you have it: my rationalization for why Halloween should still be considered not only a forefather to modern horror films but also one of the best examples of the genre that we’ll probably ever see. Like Hooper’s landmark The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), the original Halloween is surprisingly light on actual gore: there are plenty of strangulations and off-screen killing but this is about the furthest thing from something like Friday the 13th (1980) that you can get. This, of course, makes the numerous (and increasingly violent) sequels seem even more half-baked than the numerous TCM sequels: while there was some (small) precedent for graphic violence in Hooper’s film, there’s virtually none in Carpenter’s, despite the subject matter.

Despite not really thinking about Halloween in any meaningful way for years, all it took was one good, close viewing to remind me of all the reasons that this film was always one of my favorites. Like eating comfort foods, there’s just something about watching Halloween that seems natural and…well…good, to me. In a day and age where one-upmanship is the name of the game and jaded viewers have seen just about everything short of actual snuff films, it’s refreshing to return to something like Halloween and remember a time when it was possible for a horror film to make you think and feel without battering you into submission. Watching Halloween in this way has only reaffirmed my earlier love for the film: horror films wouldn’t be the same without Carpenter and Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without…well…Halloween.

7/12/14: Hack For More

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Adam Green, BJ McDonnell, Caroline Williams, cinema, Danielle Harris, different director, extreme violence, film reviews, films, franchise, Friday the 13th, gory films, Gremlins, Hatchet, Hatchet 3, Hatchet II, Hatchet III, horror films, horror franchises, inspired by '80s films, Kane Hodder, Marybeth, Movies, Repeaters, series creator, Sid Haig, slasher films, swamps, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Victor Crowley, voodoo curses, Zach Galligan

Of all the modern horror movie franchises, from Saw to Paranormal Activity and back to Wrong Turn, Adam Green’s Hatchet series is easily the most ’80s-oriented of the bunch. When the original Hatchet (2006) was unleashed upon the world, it would’ve been hard not to draw parallels to that classic “slasher in the woods” franchise, Friday the 13th: Hatchet featured hulking Kane Hodder in the role of the villain, was top-loaded with just about as much ultra-gore as could be crammed into one film (whatever didn’t fit into the first was handily saved, like excess chicken stock, for the sequels), featured violent death by as many different, inventive sources as possible and stuck a group of people (or “cannon fodder,” if you prefer) into an isolated location (a New Orleans swamp versus a summer camp in the woods) so that they could be summarily wiped from the face of the earth.

After Hatchet was a surprise hit amongst genre fans, Green followed it up with an even more over-the-top sequel, Hatchet II (2010), which managed to ramp the carnage up several notches (how that was humanly possible, I’ll never know) while simultaneously toning down the more explicitly humorous elements. While the sequel wasn’t quite as dynamic as the original film, it was still an awful lot of fun (for very strong stomachs, obviously, but that pretty much goes without saying) and actually served as a direct continuation of the first film, picking up right where Hatchet ended and using many of the same actors (the ones who actually survived, at least). When the sequel became another fan favorite, the future seemed clear: Hatchet was well on its way to entering franchise territory.

This, of course, brings us to the third film in the series, the cleverly titled Hatchet III (2013). For the first time in the relatively short-lived franchise, creator Green steps away from the director’s chair, although he did write the script and “present” the film. Turning the bullhorn over to BJ McDonnell, Green finds himself at that most formative stage of a young franchise’s life: that pivotal moment where the series must shake off its original progenitor (F13 did it with Cunningham, NOES did it with Craven), sprout it own set of moldy, mutated wings and fly away for parts unknown. Does it work? Does Green’s Hatchet really have what it takes to stick around in the world of franchise horror and hang with the big boys? Or is this strictly going to be direct-to-video fodder like the Wrong Turn series?

Picking up immediately where the second film ended, with series heroine Marybeth (Danielle Harris) blasting franchise villain Victor Crowley’s (Kane Hodder) face into red pulp with a shotgun, we hit the ground running. As Marybeth rests in the foreground, Victor rises in the background, leading to a short chase, a rather jaw-dropping moment where Marybeth does something extremely rude to Victor’s face-hole, followed by the equally eyebrow raising bit where Victor falls backwards onto an enormous chainsaw (used for cutting down 1000 ft tall oaks, I would imagine), where he’s split asunder, vertically, showering Marybeth in more blood than could possibly be contained in five Victors, all while Gwar’s “Hail Genocide” blasts on the soundtrack. The scene ends with Marybeth stumbling into town, a shotgun in one hand, Victor’s bloody scalp in the other. Roll credits, strap on your seatbelt, folks.

It bears mentioning, at this point, that Hatchet III is not for very sensitive sensibilities. This is, for lack of a better word, an ultra-gore epic, a film that not only revels in the depiction of inventive bloodshed on-screen but positively wallows in it. While the first two films in the franchise were gore-drenched, Hatchet III takes things into heretofore unheard of arenas: as someone who’s been watching these kinds of things for the better part of two decades, I was still surprised by some of the things I saw. Again, I only feel that it’s necessary to drive this home because I’d hate for a curious neophyte to think, “How bad could it get?,” assuming this was a more commercial type of horror confection: if the opening sounds stomach-churning, understand that it’s probably the least intense “kill” in the film and let your conscience (and your gut) be your guide.

Back in the “real world,” Marybeth stumbles into the local police station, setting off a bit of a panic (shotguns and bloody scalps have a tendency to do that, after all) and is promptly arrested and thrown into lockup by the tough-as-nails, foul-mouthed Sheriff Fowler (Zach Galligan). He sends his deputies out to investigate Marybeth’s claims of a huge swamp massacre, which they end up finding more than abundant evidence of (mostly numerous small pieces of former living folks). Back at the jail, Marybeth is being harassed by Sheriff Fowler’s ex-wife, the tenacious local reporter Amanda (Caroline Williams), who wants vindication for the entire town thinking her belief in Crowley is a load of zombie-shit. Seems that Amanda has been doing her research and knows a thing or two about Crowley that Marybeth doesn’t: namely, the hulking, unstoppable monster is also a “Repeater,” a cursed individual doomed to be reborn each night so as to continue its cursed killing streak again and again, ad infinitum. Uh oh. As the night creeps in, Sheriff Fowler and his deputies are going to learn one thing the hard way: you just can’t keep an enormous, undead, hatchet-wielding maniac down. It’s now up to Marybeth and Amanda to delve deep into Victor’s disturbed childhood, find the source of his “returning” and put an end to the curse once and for all.

As the third film in a growing franchise, Hatchet III occupies a rather interesting position: at this point, can the film ever stand on its own or it only valuable as a part of a greater whole? Personally, I feel that it’s possible to watch individual franchise entries in any horror series on their own, without the benefit of the “bigger picture,” as it were. That being said, however, Hatchet III is a true sequel, picking up, as it does, from the end of the previous film and actually manages to expand on the original mythos. As such, we’re actually left with a situation a little closer to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films (bear with me here), where the overall feel is of one, long film hacked into three separate pieces. It’s certainly possible to watch Hatchet III on its own but I think the experience is actually made richer by mainlining all three at the same time: talk about your bloody weekends, though!

As a film, Hatchet III is a bit closer in tone to the second film than the first: there’s less obvious humor and more of a reliance on jaw-dropping practical fx and ultra-violence. There are also quite a few appearances from genre vets, including the hilarious performance by Galligan (Gremlins (1984), Gremlins 2 (1990), Waxwork (1988)) as the ridiculously tough lawman, Williams (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), The Stepfather II (1988)) as the pushy reporter and an amusing cameo from all-around badass Sid Haig as a cranky old descendent of Crowley’s. Galligan, in particular, is pretty great, even if he’s never once convincing: there’s something awfully funny about watching young Billy all grown up and test-driving cuss words like he just learned them the other day.

Despite a slightly “direct-to-video” aesthetic, Hatchet III actual looks pretty good, certainly no worse than the previous sequel, at least. The swamp setting is used to good effect, once again, and the stuff about Repeaters is a really intelligent way to “explain” that old slasher movie conceit about the “unkillable killer.” The film is stuffed to the gills with some genuinely tense moments, although the emphasis is always squarely on the completely over-the-top gore sequences. To this end, we see limbs ripped off, heads power-sanded into oblivion, people hacked into bits, et al: it really is like a “greatest hits” of slasher-movie pandemonium and fans of the subgenre should be in hog heaven here. More sensitive stomachs, however, should certainly bolt for the hills.

Ultimately, what can I say? I genuinely enjoyed the first two films in the franchise, finding them to be fairly clever, well-made and fun throwbacks to ’80s gore films, perfect for a booze-soaked party or a little rainy-day weekend marathon. Marybeth is a suitably great “final girl,” Crowley has a nicely sketched in backstory and the supporting acting is always decent, bordering on quite good. At first, I was a little worried that handing the reins to another director might result in a lesser product but I needn’t have feared: Adam Green seems like he’s got the franchise pretty well under control, at this point. Here’s to hoping that he keeps finding inventive new ways to continue the misadventures of everyone’s favorite bayou baddie. Victor goes to Manhattan? Victor in Space? I’m ready for it, Green: bring it on!

6/22/14: It Came From Space! (Circa 1983 or Thereabouts)

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alien impregnation, alien invasion, aliens, Almost Human, Anthony Amaral III, B-movies, body horror, cinema, directorial debut, drive-in fare, extreme violence, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Friday the 13th, friendships, gory films, Graham Skipper, Hobo With a Shotgun, horror, horror films, horror movies, Jami Tennille, Joe Begos, John Ethier, lights in the sky, low-budget films, missing friends, Movies, period-piece, psycho killers, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, science-fiction, set in the 1980's, slasher films, The House of the Devil, UFOs, Vanessa Leigh, violent, writer-director

It’s not much of a secret that modern horror productions seem to be particularly enamored with the 1980s. Whether filmmakers are crafting straight-up remakes of popular ’80s titles or crafting films that are, basically, homages to ’80s horror, such as Gutterballs (2008), The House of the Devil (2009) or Hobo With a Shotgun (2011), the decade between Friday the 13th (1980) and Puppet Master (1989) certainly seems to be fertile soil, as of late. My theory on the reasoning behind this is pretty simple: as the folks who grew up on ’80s horror get older and move into positions where they can begin to create their own content (directors and writers, for sure, but I’m thinking specifically of producers and studios, here), it’s only natural for them to return to the stuff that first fired them up as kids. Whereas previous generations might have been influenced by weekly serials, ’60s-’70s pop-culture/societal issues and the Cold War, the generation of filmmakers who came of age in the ’80s were influenced by their own particular set of issues and found comfort in their own “new” subgenres, such as slasher films and graphic sci-fi/horror combos like Creature (1985) and The Fly (1986). When it finally came time for the “children of VHS” to make their own films, it shouldn’t be surprising that they returned to their formative era: once the folks who grew up in the ’90s begin to take over, we should be seeing lots of rebooted ’90s properties (there’s already a Scream TV series in the works, so the cycle appears to have begun a little early). Life, as Stephen King so eloquently put it, is such a wheel that it always, in the end, comes round to the same place again.

One-man wrecking crew, Joe Begos, is a little young to comfortably fit within my above theory (he was born in 1987, making him a good decade younger than his “peers”) but he fits the bill so perfectly that he must be an old soul. The writer-director-producer-cinematographer-camera operator behind Almost Human (2013) announced his entry to the world of feature filmmaking with a sci-fi horror movie that could have fit perfectly within the ’80s, sandwiched somewhere between Xtro (1983) and The Hidden (1987). Far from being just a clever approximation of a bygone decade, however, Begos’ film manages to combine all of the necessary ingredients (rudimentary acting, gory practical effects, plenty of action sequences, goopy makeup, intense violence) with a loopy sense of energy and comes up with something that’s suitably rough but just endearing enough to make you want to write Begos’ name on your Trapper Keeper. If ever there were a new genre filmmaker to watch, this guy might just be it.

Set in 1987, Almost Human kicks off in sci-fi high-gear with our terrified protagonist, Seth (Graham Skipper, looking like a slightly doughy Daniel Radcliffe), rushing to the cabin of best friend Mark (Josh Ethier) and his wife, Jen (Vanessa Leigh). Seth has just watched as mutual friend Rob was sucked up into the sky, via a shaft of blue light, and the event has him a little unsettled…actually, he’s in a complete panic but why split hairs? Mark is a burly, Brawny Towel-kind of a dude, so he doesn’t seem too ruffled over Seth’s jibber-jabber. Too bad, since Seth is absolutely right: there’s something otherworldly out there and it sucks Mark straight up into the sky, leaving his terrified wife and buddy standing around as the air is filled with intense screeching and blinding, flashing lights. Smash-cut to the title, white letters on a severe, black background and you might be forgiven for thinking you’d booted up the VCR instead of the Blu-Ray.

Two years later and Seth has been cleared as a suspect but nothing else has really gone right for him: Mark and Rob never turned up, Jen moved on to a new guy, Clyde (Anthony Amaral III) and Seth is prone to headaches, nose bleeds and a generally shitty lifestyle. After two years of relative “peace,” however, things have started to happen again: power outages have become common-place again and folks have been seeing weird lights in the sky. Something appears to be brewing and a pair of unfortunate hunters stumble, literally, right into the middle of everything when they happen upon Mark’s naked body in the middle of the woods. Mark seems to be alive but doesn’t seem quite right (he appears to be covered in amniotic fluid which, for a grown, naked man is usually a dead giveaway that shit is not, in face, okay): his eyes look weird, he seems to be in shock and doesn’t say much more than “Jen,” over and over. He also ends up killing the two hunters with his bare hands, which is probably as good an indicator as any that the Mark we now see ain’t the Mark we once knew.

After taking some clothes and a rifle, Mark proceeds into town, cutting a bloody swath through anyone unlucky enough to confront him. His goal appears to be some kind of reconciliation with his former wife but to what end? As Seth finally reconnects with Jen, the two are forced to team up against a truly otherworldly force: you see, Mark is finally home but he’s both a lot less and a lot more than he used to be. What exactly does he want? Why, he just wants what anybody wants: he wants to start a family with the person he loves, that’s all. Unfortunately, Mark’s notions of fatherhood are more in line with Alien (1979) than Leave It To Beaver, leading to a desperate, all-in fight to save humanity from an evil, insidious force from beyond the stars…a force that, like a shark, knows only a few imperatives: eat…procreate…repeat. Can Seth and Jen survive? Can any of us?

From the above description, one could be forgiven for believing that Almost Human is a pretty traditional Alien/Xtro clone about an alien creature that uses humans for feeding and breeding: in reality, the film is actually much closer to a traditional slasher film dolled-up in sci-fi trappings. This actually allows Begos to do two different things: he can create a more traditional slasher, right down to the emphasis on varied methods of death, and he can throw in enough body-horror/sci-fi ickiness to make sure that this doesn’t just read like a Friday the 13th clone. How’s it work out? Pretty damn nicely, to be honest. The slasher elements are strong and well-done, if not particularly inventive (axes, close-range shotguns, scissors and knives all get workouts) but they’re given an additional shot in the arm by the sci-fi elements. While this definitely helps reign the film’s budget in (Begos, like other low-budget horror filmmakers, has learned that the cheapest villains are always the ones who look the most like us, even if they’re filled with aliens/ghosts/mystery juice/a dose of the crazies), the mixture is good enough that it never feels like a cop-out. Indeed, Bego’s sci-fi elements lead to some of the film’s strongest, strangest scenes such as the ooky “pod people” and Mark’s attempted rape/impregnation of Jen via nasty alien tube thingamabopper. Too many scenes of Mark trooping around with a glare and an ax and we get a pretty generic “dead teenager” film: too much outer space mumbo-jumbo and we get the equivalent of one of Corman’s micro-budget ’80s sci-fi curiosities (many of which were the Asylum/Syfy films of their era, as it was). It’s to Begos’ immense credit that the film always feels perfectly balanced: it always feels like a cheaply made B-movie but never feels awkward or disposable.

From a filmmaking standpoint, Almost Human can be hit-or-miss but most of the issues can be chalked up to “first-time filmmaker jitters” or any of the woes normally associated with micro-budget productions: the acting is pretty iffy, the sound mix is absolutely awful (when will low-budget filmmakers ever learn that sound is too fucking important to be handled by whoever has a free hand?) and some of the plot developments felt completely arbitrary, even for a low-budget horror film. That being said, Almost Human never feels sub-standard and is never difficult to watch: whatever minor flaws the film may have, Begos’ cinematography and the film’s editing style aren’t two of them. I’ve seen plenty of low-budget horror films that are practically painful to sit through: wildly inconsistent acting, poor lighting, crappy camera-work, lame scripts and ridiculous CGI effects. While Begos’ film isn’t a masterpiece, it also doesn’t fall prey to any of these potential deal breakers. The acting may be rough but it’s consistently rough, which makes it a lot harder to notice, ironically enough. The lighting and cinematography are good, as are the practical effects (truth be told, the effects work is actually very good, budget notwithstanding) and the script is solid, if less than spectacular.

Ultimately, as a life-long horror fan, it was impossible for me not to be suitably impressed by Begos’ feature-film debut. While the film was far from perfect, it also revealed a genuine love of the genre and an inherent ability that speaks extremely well for future projects (Begos interned with Stuart Gordon, which may go a long way towards explaining not only the younger filmmaker’s “older” aesthetic but also his affinity for nasty effects work). Begos may have been all of three years old when the ’80s slid into the ’90s but his aesthetic (both visually and thematically) is strictly old-school video store. When a 27-year-old writer/director includes a credit listing for a “Fake Shemp” in his debut film, let’s just say that it’s pretty obvious his head (and heart) is in the right place. Anyone who grew up in the era of direct-to-VHS shockers, low-budget slashers and ultra-gory sci-fi chillers should find something to like about Begos’ Almost Human. If you require the relentless polish and shine of “modern,” CGI-endowed horror films, however, look elsewhere: Begos ain’t for you. For me, however, I’m gonna be sure to keep the kid in my sights: after all, if Almost Human is the first lap, I can’t wait to see how this race progresses.

1/19/14: The Waiting is the Hardest Part

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alcoholism, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, Amber Heard, anticipation, auteur theory, Cabin in the Woods, Chinese Democracy, cinema, documentaries, documentary, Film, Film auteurs, Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, high school angst, horror films, hunters, isolation, Jonathan Levine, long-delayed films, man vs. nature, Movies, Siberia, slasher films, trappers, Trick 'r Treat, Werner Herzog

Since this past weekend was a long one, I intended to cram as many films into Sunday and Monday as possible. I didn’t break any personal records but I did manage to pack four pretty disparate films into each day. As such, I’ve decided to split up the days and give each entry a little room to breath. This blog post will deal with the first two films from Sunday, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane and Happy People: A Year in the Taiga. We’ll deal with the final two next time.

It’s often been said that you don’t really appreciate something until you have to wait for it. The anticipation leading up to that moment can, oftentimes, be even greater than whatever enjoyment you might have garnered from whatever it is you’re waiting for. What happens, however, when the wait stretches to ludicrous proportions? If you’re a music fan, you might get Chinese Democracy. If you’re a film fan, you might get Trick ‘r Treat. Or, conversely, you might get All the Boys Love Mandy.

Let me be clear: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with director Jonathan Levine’s long-delayed homage to classic slasher films. The film does an excellent job of establishing a retro tone and look, even though there are enough modern touches (iPhones, most notably) to remind us that this is still taking place in the here and now. The violence is brutal and unrelenting, hearkening back to the yesteryear of practical effects and noisy stabbings. One kill in particular, a nasty bit involving a knife across the eyes reminded me directly of early Friday the 13th films.

The acting is, across the board, pretty strong: I normally don’t feel any connection to the disposable teens in slasher films, but I connected with a few of these yahoos nonetheless. Even when they were exhibiting boorish, crude behavior, there was still a basic humanity to all of them that made the kills sting a little, regardless of the bro-ish nature of the victims. I thought Amber Heard was good in the title role but certainly not the embodiment of Helen of Troy that the story posits. She was cute, don’t get me wrong, but I found it rather hard to believe that every male in the universe would be drawn to her like a moth to flame.

I must also praise the film’s sound design and soundtrack, elements which really added to the tone. I particularly liked the use of a cover of America’s “Sister Golden Hair,” perfectly cued as Mandy and her friends enjoy a last bit of youthful abandon before (presumably) the carnage begins: it’s a folky, wispy cover that is not only quite pretty but also fits the scene like a glove. Equally notable is the Bobby Vinton version of “Sealed with a Kiss” that closes the film: to be honest, the entire climax is extremely well done and pretty great, even if the “twist” is nothing special.

With all of these things to recommend it, then, what’s my hesitation with shouting my love of Mandy Lane from the rooftops? Well, essentially, there’s that whole thing about anticipation. You see, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was made in 2006 but not released in North America until 2013 (the film received a limited UK release in 2008, however). It received good press at film festivals around the time of its completion, leading me to add the film to my “Must See” list at the time. As the years ground on, however, I actually forgot about the movie. Director Jonathan Levine went on to decent success with the Joseph Gordon Levitt cancer film 50/50 and, more recently, the zombie romance Warm Bodies which, I’m sure, helped to finally push All the Boys Love Mandy Lane into the public eye.

Is the film honestly worth a seven-year wait, however? Absolutely not. It’s a good film, sometimes a very good film but it doesn’t reinvent the wheel (or the genre, for that matter) or bring anything new to the table aside from the very nice cinematography and production designs. This was Levine’s debut feature but ended up being his fourth film to see release…yikes. As a comparison, Joss Weadon’s Cabin in the Woods and Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat also experienced unduly lengthy release delays. They also, however, were incredibly crafted, highly-meta film experiences that justified every second of their ridiculous delays. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is just a really good film that probably would have looked even better in 2006.

How in the hell can you not absolutely love Werner Herzog? I mean, really: if this guy isn’t the living embodiment of The Most Interesting Man in the World, who is? He’s been responsible for some of the most amazing, confounding art films in history (Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Fitzcarrldo; Only Dwarfs Start Small), some of the most batshit crazy Klaus Kinski moments in a career filled to bursting with batshit (the aforementioned Aguirre; Nosferatu the Vampyre; Cobra Verde), made a handful of amazing documentaries, including one about a guy who gets devoured by a grizzly bear and even directed a sequel to Abel Ferrara’s sleazy Bad Lieutenant starring the one and only Nicholas “Intensity” Cage. Is there anything Herzog can’t do?

For Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, Herzog serves as co-director and narrative, meaning we get the unmitigated pleasure of listening to Herzog expound on anything and everything around him. Believe me when I say that there are few joys as pure and absolute as listening to Herzog detail the necessary procedures to keep food safe from bears…this, by itself, deserves an Oscar.

As the title indicates, Happy People chronicles an entire year in the lives of a group of Russian hunter/trappers living in the Taiga region of Siberia. Completely inhospitable to the average person, the Taiga is only accessible by helicopter or boat and boats can only dock for a few months in the Summer. As such, this is pretty much one of the toughest places on earth, the kind of location that Jack London would head to for some rest and relaxation. The weather is cold, the terrain is formidable, food is scarce and clouds of mosquitoes fill the air. The hunters spend pretty much the entire year either preparing for the Winter hunt or actually hunting, only seeing their families for a few days at a time every couple of seasons. By all definitions, this is a brutally hard life.

Yet, the film is called Happy People. And, according to what we see (and Herzog tells us), these are happy people, indeed. They’re happy because when they finally leave the (relative) comforts of home and head into the wild to live off the land, they are truly free from the constraints of society. There are no taxes, no governments, no politicians or silly societal rituals to observe. There is only the hunter and his dogs, using their instincts, wits and training to survive and their personal ideals to guide them.

Admittedly, the revelation for the purpose of Herzog’s documentary is rather Zen but it perfectly fits his career-long themes. Herzog has always been an expert at documenting the lengths that man will go to isolate himself from the outside world and the ways in which the world will continue to make itself know. In Happy People, the outside world intrudes in a number of ways, most notably with the politician who visits the remote village to stump for his campaign (only the children pay attention and it’s doubtful that they’re allowed to vote) and the greedy hunters who earn the scorn of the other trappers by hunting and trapping in off seasons, depleting the stole population and putting everyone’s livelihood in jeopardy. Herzog also, for a brief time, turns his cameras on the Ket people, local natives who have fallen into alcoholism and can only collect firewood and perform other menial tasks to earn their pittance for survival. The point is pretty clear: when the outside world intrudes, humanity is crushed, whether spiritually, economically or politically.

As a film, Happy People is extraordinarily well-crafted. The footage is absolutely gorgeous, particularly the stunning and unforgettable Winter footage. There’s plenty of genuine pathos in the film, especially with regards to the relationship between the hunters and their dogs. One story, about a dog sacrificing itself to save its master from a bear, would make the hardest heart crack. The scene where one of the trappers returns to the village via snowmobile while his dog runs beside him, nonstop throughout the day and night, is, quite simply, one of the most magnificent moments ever laid to film. The visual grandeur of the moment is dwarfed by the impossible power of what’s happening: a dog so attuned to its master that it will run for a hundred miles without stopping.

Ultimately, Happy People offers one of the best, most valuable lessons any of us could ever take away from a film: To get through life, you need to grit your teeth and push on, no matter what stands before you. When you come home from a long, hard day of hunting and discover that your cabin has been completely crushed by a fallen tree, sometimes, you just have to grin and repair it. This sounds like a lesson we could all stand to learn.